Become an IR Ninja: 15 easy keyboard & mouse combos to give you a daily competitive edge

Why:

We’ve all seen that colleague use keyboard and mouse shortcuts to edit presentations, browse, select fields and hop around excel like some sort of keyboard ninja. With this resource we’re giving you 15 shortcuts that are easy to learn. By working a few or all of these into your habits you’ll gain a pep in your walk that will have you breezing through your work day with more intent and focus. We’re sticking to only 15 useful and easy shortcuts because most of us don’t have time or patience for the marginal benefit of learning and practicing the other hundreds of shortcuts available. Seriously what are those people compensating for anyway? Just kidding Jake, we’re very impressed.

If you’re a shortcut ninja already, don’t read any further. Check out our How To Humanize Real Estate Investor Relations instead!

15 shortcuts that will make you a more efficient investor relations pro.

Browsing the Internet

Open a New Tab

Win: Ctrl + T | Mac: Command + T

OK, simple one. Go ahead, try it now. If you are letting go of your keyboard, reaching for your mouse and clicking to open a new tab, you should definitely be incorporating this quick and easy shortcut.

Open a New Window

Win: Ctrl + N | Mac: Command + N

This will get you a new window when browsing the internet. Bonus, it will also give you a new document (word, excel etc.) when working in that environment.

Open a Tab You Closed

Win: Ctrl + Shift + T | Mac: Command + Shift + T

Similar to the above one, you won’t use this as much, but it can save you loads of time when you closed a tab you wanna see again. Sometimes I hit this shortcut a few times to get to a tab I had opened earlier in my session.

Open a Link in a New Tab

Win: Ctrl + Click | Mac: Command + Click

Think of your Google search with all of those results or any link you want to follow without leaving the current page you are browsing.

Jump From Tab to Tab

Win: Ctrl + Tab | Mac: Control + Tab

Use to cycle through open tabs in your internet browser. Very satisfying shortcut to look at different tabs without having to grab your mouse, point and click. 

Bonus: Ctrl or Command + a number from 1 to 8 jumps to the tab in that position.

Bonus: If your keyboard has a page up and page down button, hold control and hit those to jump in either direction.

Go To Address Bar

Win: Alt + D | Mac: Command + L

This will move to your address bar and highlight it’s contents. So you can just start typing the URL you want to visit.

Switch From One Selector to the Next

Win: Tab | Mac: Tab

As you are filling out a form, hit the button Tab to jump to the next field. Once you get to the bottom of your form, hit tab until you highlight the submit button, and hit enter! Form filled. Let’s go!

Excel & Google sheets

Insert row left or column above

Win: Alt + I (As in Igloo), then R or C | Mac: Option + Control, then R or C

Saves you the effort of right clicking on a tiny cell then selecting the option you want.

Select Entire Row

Win: Shift + Spacebar | Mac: Shift + Spacebar

Select Entire Column

Win: Ctrl + Spacebar | Mac: Control + Spacebar
Edit and create that impressive spreadsheet of yours faster with these two.

Delete Row

Win: Alt + E, then D | Mac: Option + Control, then D

General

Move Cursor to the Next Line (Without getting a paragraph break or submitting message)

Win: Shift + Enter | Mac: Shift + Enter

When composing a message in slack or LinkedIn, this shortcut let’s you move to the next line without submitting your message. When writing a document, you can use this to skip to the next line without getting a paragraph break.

Move cursor by words instead of character by character.

Win: Ctrl + Direction Key | Mac: Option + Direction Key

Quick way to jump to a section of your text you want to edit, instead of holding down the direction key, use this shortcut to jump words instead of characters.

Bonus: Also hold shift and you’ll highlight the words for easy edits to your text.

Select All Objects on a Page, or All Content Inside a Field

Win: Ctrl + A | Mac: Command + A

Tired of clicking and dragging to select a bunch of content? Sometimes your mouse doesn’t grab everything? Click once inside the field and hit this shortcut. Voila.

Minimize Everything

Win: Win Key + M | Mac: Option + Command + M + H (yikes!)

There are times you want to get everything out of your screen. Do it in a split second with this shortcut.

Search Text on Any Page or Document

Win: Ctrl + F | Mac: Command + F

Very useful when doing research. You find a link on Google and want to jump to the exact place the keyword is mentioned. Hit this shortcut and a field will appear on your browser, start typing and the browser will jump to the first instance of that keyword, highlight all other instances. Hit enter to jump further down on the page to the next instance.

Hope some of these become useful additions to your work skills! Join 6,000+ syndicators in getting guides, models, presentation templates, and more resources created to help you become a better investor.